Friday, March 03, 2006

Quite The Correction

March 1, 2006, Wednesday. The Istanbul Journal article on Feb. 14 about ''Valley of the Wolves -- Iraq,'' a popular Turkish-made film that depicts American soldiers in Iraq as tyrannical occupiers, referred imprecisely to scenes cited by the screenwriter as ''inspired by real events.'' While two such scenes -- the killing of Iraqis by American soldiers and the mistreatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison -- have been documented, the scene depicting an American Jewish surgeon at Abu Ghraib removing organs from Iraqi prisoners for shipment to recipients in New York, London and Israel is fictional.

Well, yes. I would say that depicting a Jewish doctor stealing Iraqi prisoners' organs to send to Jewish recipients as being "inspired by real events" is a bit "imprecise".(via)

When I read the article it was completely clear to me that "inspired by real events" was the tagline of the movie and the NY Times article in no way was endorsing that as fact. In fact I thought that line was included in a negative context.

I assume that since the article didn't explicitly state the movie was presenting fiction as fact they'd rather write a belated correction than risk misinterpretation.